My husband and I had dinner with some other couples before going to the opera last Saturday night. One friend had just come from meetings at work about her employer's latest contract. The company is a small environmental cleanup firm that is trying to branch into commercial construction with this new project. The new project is in Iraq. They have recieved some subcontracting dollars from Haliburton to help with the reconstruction efforts.
Of course we teased my friend a little about whether she was planning on going over to Iraq herself to work on the project. I mean, how bad could it be over there? And this is what she told us...
When you get to Iraq, you have to drive from the airport to get to the Green Zone in Baghdad. There is a six mile stretch of road that the military has never been able to secure. Each time anyone makes the trip to, or from, the airport the company that provides security charges $10,000. Our tax dollars pay that bill.
$10,000 for the airport shuttle to Baghdad. Wow!
Once you get inside the Green Zone, there you must stay. Americans are not safe outside. Not anywhere else in the city.
So, here are the questions I was too polite to ask on Saturday night...Why is this little company from Cincinnati, with no construction experience whatsoever, getting a significant contract to rebuild schools in Iraq instead of an Iraqi contractor with extensive experience of local building issues and best practices?
Why are we paying a contractor $10,000 a ride to protect a stretch of road we supposedly have under military control?
My new theory about this war is that it will go on as long as there is money to be made from war profiteering. These astonishingly big ticket contracts are too much of a good thing for those who contribute to political campaigns to allow our elected officials to end the war any time soon. Our young people in military service are there in Iraq to enable the cash cow to keep on producing. Though billions have been appropriated and further billions will be called for, a disproportionate share is going to continue to go to the contractors. What with inflation and all, who knows? Maybe next year the shuttle to the airport will cost $15,000?